I just built a system based on the Intel Xeon X3440 processor. Slapped it into an Asus P7H55-M Pro motherboard and overclocked it to a stable 3.5GHz. All wrapped up, it's a 4 core, 8 thread system with 8gb of ram and a 4gb RX480. The success I've had with building this made me wonder what kind of cheap options there are out there for folks who want a dedicated SETI@Home number cruncher. The x3440 was less than $20, the motherboard was $60, the RAM was $30, the hard drive and ssd I got totaled $100, the PSU was $40, and the GPU was $120. Hyper 212 cooler for $25 and a few case fans. I bought a bunch of other little things that nickel and dimed the total cost to over $500, but if I was absolutely strapped I could have left out the hard drive, lowered the SSD capacity, and dropped down to an entry level GPU instead. A system like this could be built for under $300.

Has anyone reading this gone and done this, though? Bought an old Xeon chip because they are ridiculously cheap, slapped it into a used motherboard, and used it exclusively for SETI@home or other cloud computing endeavors? The email I received from Sabrina Berger got me thinking about it more and I would like to do it more. Just have a corner with a few systems running to look for aliens. What are your experiences and what parts have you picked?

Did that a couple of years ago. A dual E5530 Intel board with 12Gb ram cost me a whole $200 CAD. Later I upgraded it to x5680s for $150, although I was still impressed with the 5530s the 5680s are great for it. A pair of 1050Ti's. Add a 4 pack of 4TB drives running MD5 soft RAID5 on Linux.

A rock solid NAS server and seti cruncher in one :)

The only problem with these older systems is running costs.
For the same TDP rating, you can get a modern CPU with 50% higher clock speed, and twice the number of cores & threads and a higher IPC (Instructions Per Clock) as well.

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Grant
Darwin NT

If you just use the CPU to feed multiple GPUs you don't mind the slight power increase from the older CPUs.
The Ultimate Old CPU story. A X3330, $25. An old HP workstation MB, $22. 8GB Ram, $40. Other items of the cheap variety PS, $45? Old HP case, Free, etc...
The result,
CPU type: GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X3330 @ 2.66GHz [x86 Family 6 Model 23 Stepping 10]
Number of processors: 4
Coprocessors: [4] NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (4095MB) driver: 5902.58 OpenCL: 1.2
Average credit: 170,330.39

The Coprocessors help a whole lot. The poor old Xeon is Pegged, has been for months.
You really can run 4 GPUs with that old HP board by using PCIe extenders. But, two of them are using old PCIe Gen1 slots.
Hopefully the poor quad Xeon will get a break later this week when I build a new Hackintosh.

Back when the xw4600 boards could be had for $22 I bought 3 of them, and matched them with $25 Core2Quads.
Here's another one, Average credit: 38,693.06

But how much does it cost to actually run a system that is running BOINC 24/7? When I was testing my Ryzen 2400g system for stability for a couple months, I was surprised at how little my electricity bill rose. The difference in my bill was just 139 kWh and that was also at the same time we started using the air conditioner for the summer, so it's not even a good comparison. It's like $15. I imagine if someone were to splurge for an 80+ Gold power supply like I did with my Ryzen system, the running cost would be negligible. The biggest cost would still be the parts in the system itself and the cost per performance would be a couple dollars a month at most.

But how much does it cost to actually run a system that is running BOINC 24/7?

Depends on the system.
Mine are pulling around 650W total. Unless you've got really cheap power, that adds up over time.

When I was testing my Ryzen 2400g system for stability for a couple months.

100W for a system (if that much) would be bugger all compared to the requirements of a half decent sized aircon.
Of course if that Ryzen 2400G system was also driving a pair of Titan Vs running the LINUX special application, then it would rival the aircon's power usage.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I don't have a watt meter on it, but the Xeon system is reporting, with HWMonitor, to be using 95 watts on the processor and rarely hits 100 watts with the RX 480. I have it powered with a 600 watt 80+ bronze power supply. It's definitely using more power than 200, though. But that's about what I'm thinking about system-wise. A Xeon with a used graphics card. I haven't really done too much research on how to maximize computing for Seti@Home. Just how I might go about building something cheap. The original goal of the Xeon system I built was to be a cheap gaming PC. But building it got me thinking about SETI@Home.

I haven't gotten around to testing my 2400g again since installing an RX 580 in it causes it to get close to throttle temperature with the stock wraith stealth cooler when running Seti@Home. It's not dangerous, but I also don't want it to be hitting 90c while I'm off at work. Got a new cooler for that coming in the mail.

FWIW, my dual E5-2680v2 systems with dual GTX 1080s draw 650-700 watts each. So I am using about 1400 watts 24/7 or just about 1000KWH/month. In New England (Newton, MA), that's costing me ~$200/month (ugh). So I think I will stick with just 2 systems for the nonce.

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Xeons from Sandy Bridge and up do support AVX, I just checked Here.
My 2 x5675's do support AES and SSE4, the single x3480 that I have only supports as high as SSE4.
I have 3 E5-1650v2 Ivy Bridge cpus and they do support AVX, plus AES and SSE4.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

My Ryzen 5 1400 chip can execute 8 tasks simultaneously while being a 4 core machine. My former A10-6700, sold as 4 cores but that the Windows Task Manager identified as a 2 core 4 logical processor, would run only 2. The only problem with the Ryzen is that its BIOS has no AMD-V, so I cannot run tasks using VirtualBox, such as those of LHC@home.
Tullio

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A host like mine with a 6850 CPU + 4x1070 draws about 650 W from the power outlet (just check with kill-o-watt).

So is close to 500 kw/hr per month. Just multiply for the cost (here 0.21359 US$ per kw/hr) and you get about 100 US$ per month in my case.

Obviously cheaper electric cost is important when you try to run a multi host farm.

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'Xeon' is a generic brand name like Ford or Chrysler - it has been used for everything from Pentium IIs (1998) to the latest 'Coffee-Lake' range with 6 cores and integrated GPU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors

You need to really do your homework and consider which generation within that range is under discussion, whether you're asking questions or answering them.

Secondly, modern GPU's vastly out perform CPU's of any kind, so upgrading in that direction is more worthwhile.

Yes, but - my dual Xeons are 10 cores, so each machine has 40 threads. I set SETI to use 95%, so there are 38 "CPUs" available. With 2 1080s running 3 WUs each, that leaves 32 threads for MB. Since similar WUs take about 10x longer on the CPU (1.5-2 hrs vs ~10 min on the GPU), the 32 cores running SETI are the equivalent of another GTX 1080. And at a lower electricity cost than another GPU, too, since my Xeons draw <100 watts each, vs 100+ on a more typical I7 CPU with vastly fewer thread count.

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I ran a couple of older Xeons for a while. Due to being HP's you couldn't upgrade the PSU without paying an arm and a leg.

So I guess the question is how cheap is "cheap" and what generation to help increase the power use efficiency?

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

It is after all only a pastime and a hobby

Precisely. Which is why I went the dual Xeon E5-2670, then E5-2680v2 route - the CPUs were very cheap, the motherboards were $2-300, so the machines' base cost was < $500, much cheaper than the cost of hi-end GPUs (Bitcoin helped drive that, of course).

G-d bless eBay and Craigslist!

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A little example of what I was saying the other day about the best use for the old CPUs is to drive new GPUs. I got the 'new', from eBay, i5-6600 yesterday, but the power supply didn't make it. So, I decided to just do a quick build in the case that was running the Q9400/X3330. Old build was the old HP xw4600, Q9400 (same cpu as X3330), and two 750Ti running the Special App in OSX. The new build is a Gigabyte z270P-D3, on sale for $40 at NewEgg, and the used i5-6600, from eBay at $114. There is very little difference in the GPU times, a couple of seconds, old hardware drives GPUs just fine. The CPU times are atrocious. What took the old core2quad 75 minutes finishes in 28 minutes, the shorties that took 46 minutes now take 18.5 minutes with the OSX AVX2 App. Pretty brutal. The setup is the same, the two 750Ti running a single cuda task, and the CPU running a single CPU task, one the SSE41 App and one the AVX2 version.

Now that I know the new build will run High Sierra without any problems, I'll swap out the other machine currently running the X3330 in a few days. Maybe increase it to 5 or so GPUs while at it.
That was relatively painless, I basically just used the High Sierra SSD that had run on the HP boards earlier.

I have two X5675 3.06GHz 6 core cpus and two Asus R3E motherboards, 1 motherboard needs a new cpu socket, but buying this motherboard used is not inexpensive, not at about $450, which is not guaranteed, damaged was about $100 to buy and repairs about $70 or so, the repair place puts up special prices sometimes so the price varies, then I need to get a 24pin cable repaired on an Enermax Revolution+ 1050w psu(quoted $110 at one time, I'd have to spend another $20 to ship the psu to FL I think, the psu was not like this when I bought it at one time) and the cable is attached otherwise I'd replace the cable on this semi modular psu. I'll get these done asap.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I have two X5675 3.06GHz 6 core cpus and two Asus R3E motherboards, 1 motherboard needs a new cpu socket, but buying this motherboard used is not inexpensive, not at about $450, which is not guaranteed, damaged was about $100 to buy and repairs about $70 or so, the repair place puts up special prices sometimes so the price varies, then I need to get a 24pin cable repaired on an Enermax Revolution+ 1050w psu(quoted $110 at one time, I'd have to spend another $20 to ship the psu to FL I think, the psu was not like this when I bought it at one time) and the cable is attached otherwise I'd replace the cable on this semi modular psu. I'll get these done asap.

If that's what you want to do motherboard-wise, get an HP Z800 motherboard for your 2 X5675s. It works very nicely for SETI. And can be had for under $200, sometimes well under.

Caveats:
1) BUT it has proprietary connectors for the power supply, so also get a (~$10) power supply adapter for it, so you can use a standard PSU. you can find the MB on eBay, and the adapters, too.
2) Make sure you have the 003 version of the MB, which will use the X56nn chips. The earlier versions could only do dual X55nns.

See this link:

http://andybrown.me.uk/2014/11/01/z800/

I did it, and it was a) cheap, and b) a lot of fun, actually.

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I have two X5675 3.06GHz 6 core cpus and two Asus R3E motherboards, 1 motherboard needs a new cpu socket, but buying this motherboard used is not inexpensive, not at about $450, which is not guaranteed, damaged was about $100 to buy and repairs about $70 or so, the repair place puts up special prices sometimes so the price varies, then I need to get a 24pin cable repaired on an Enermax Revolution+ 1050w psu(quoted $110 at one time, I'd have to spend another $20 to ship the psu to FL I think, the psu was not like this when I bought it at one time) and the cable is attached otherwise I'd replace the cable on this semi modular psu. I'll get these done asap.

If that's what you want to do motherboard-wise, get an HP Z800 motherboard for your 2 X5675s. It works very nicely for SETI. And can be had for under $200, sometimes well under.

Caveats:
1) BUT it has proprietary connectors for the power supply, so also get a (~$10) power supply adapter for it, so you can use a standard PSU. you can find the MB on eBay, and the adapters, too.
2) Make sure you have the 003 version of the MB, which will use the X56nn chips. The earlier versions could only do dual X55nns.

See this link:

http://andybrown.me.uk/2014/11/01/z800/

I did it, and it was a) cheap, and b) a lot of fun, actually.

Nice, but that's an HPTX form factor and can be found for about $150-$160 for the moment, it's like finding a case for an EVGA SR2, sure they can be found but not always, like a Xigmatek Elysium Black for $279.00 while it lasts. I have limited floor space, so what I'm doing works for Me and I don't yet have the required money to do that, maybe in a few months I could, but by then those 8 cases and 2 motherboards will be long gone.

Another HAF XB case will be $99 at the very least, the the XB won't support bigger than EATX officially nothing beyond ATX, it's just that EATX fits.

And I don't want to go off topic as both posts would likely end up in My thread. So I'm ending it here.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I have two X5675 3.06GHz 6 core cpus and two Asus R3E motherboards, 1 motherboard needs a new cpu socket, but buying this motherboard used is not inexpensive, not at about $450, which is not guaranteed, damaged was about $100 to buy and repairs about $70 or so, the repair place puts up special prices sometimes so the price varies, then I need to get a 24pin cable repaired on an Enermax Revolution+ 1050w psu(quoted $110 at one time, I'd have to spend another $20 to ship the psu to FL I think, the psu was not like this when I bought it at one time) and the cable is attached otherwise I'd replace the cable on this semi modular psu. I'll get these done asap.

If that's what you want to do motherboard-wise, get an HP Z800 motherboard for your 2 X5675s. It works very nicely for SETI. And can be had for under $200, sometimes well under.

Caveats:
1) BUT it has proprietary connectors for the power supply, so also get a (~$10) power supply adapter for it, so you can use a standard PSU. you can find the MB on eBay, and the adapters, too.
2) Make sure you have the 003 version of the MB, which will use the X56nn chips. The earlier versions could only do dual X55nns.

See this link:

http://andybrown.me.uk/2014/11/01/z800/

I did it, and it was a) cheap, and b) a lot of fun, actually.

Supermicro made an ATX motherboard that does what the HP Z800 does, the motherboard is the X8DAL-i, this motherboard can handle 5500/5600 cpu's
and has a Bios update from 2018 for the Spectre vulnerability.
Oh and the memory I could find is priced from about $13 and goes up in price from there.
The only fly in this ointment is the there are 3 pci-e slots, a x16(2.0), a x4(2.0), and a second x4(unknown version, Supermicro didn't say) which would be covered by a 2nd video card.

This is the B or Bulk version, this is similar to the v2.0, minus 2 heatsinks, with only the heatsink/fan this is v2.0 of X8DAL-i motherboard and a change in where some slots are at.
I have not seen the Bulk version beyond the pictures, though the motherboard might show up on ebay one day.
Some have cpus, some have cpus and heatsinks.

The non B version. v1.01

v2.0

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's